From Shabby to Shabby Chic

I come from a line of painters, fixer upers & crafters. I enjoy a good do it yourself project as much as the next person, but I have my limits. For example, I don’t mind painting a bookcase or even a room but I draw the line at knocking out walls or ripping up floors. I like to think that my attitude is the healthy medium between my father, who likes do rip up and demolish (he is an engineer) and my mother, who likes to paint and decorate. When we bought our house, I was specific that I wanted something “old” with “character” but not something we were going to have to spend every weekend working on. I think our house is the perfect balance.

So back to the painted furniture. A few years ago (two maybe?) we helped two good friends of ours move from one apartment to another. As is the case with moves, when you are faced with moving furniture you start to do some serious reevaluation. The “awesome deal” that you got on that “wood” entertainment center at Big Lots seems less impressive when faced with actually lifting the damn thing. Therefore, after we had moved said friends into their shiny new apartment we found ourselves with a new/old dresser and bookcase. I looked at these two pieces of furniture and saw potential for painting and refinishing. The bookcase underwent it’s makeover fairly quickly. This was mostly because, if you know us, you know we have about 1 million books, so it was more necessity than anything else. It is sitting proudly in our dining room doing its job:

This color is called Barn Red from The Mark Twain Collection. Seems appropriate.

The other piece of furniture, a dresser, stayed down in our basement for about a year. I would go down and look at it sometimes but I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with it and so it sat. And sat. And sat. After the wedding, I took on the job of cleaning my closets and discovered that I would need some more storage space. That’s all the motivation I needed. Over the next few days I researched painting techniques and made several trips to Ace Hardware. This is is the finished product:

Not too shabby!

I painted the entire piece with Krylon spray paint (glossy white) and then I bought some glaze at Lowes. The glaze was heavily tinted with black, so it makes it look worn and old. I think it turned out remarkably well considering I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s amazing what one can accomplish when properly motivated.